 I'm going back to school sort of, kind of. I just joined a business incubator and startup accelerator in Vietnam as their entrepreneur in residence. It's like a star school, but what does that even mean? Technologies, technologies, oh. As a product designer, I never thought I would utter the words incubator, accelerator, school, and me. What is that? It's all just meaning words. But let me explain how it happened, what the program is about. And at the end of the video, I'll tell you how I feel about it before starting. My co-founder from Divi, a small little startup I built to scratch my own edge, applied to this program on my behalf, without really knowing what it is. So the conversation actually went like this. Hey, I got a message on LinkedIn. What? Antler. Oh yeah, I looked the same. Should we apply? Yeah, sure. That was it. I had no idea the application was under my name, I had no idea of the time commitment actually needed, and I had no idea what to expect when they sent me their first meeting invite. Sorry, the Antler team, if you end up watching this video. So after three rounds of interviews, we got accepted. Okay, I don't know. Woo, woo, woo! I and my co-founder will now be joining a 10-week or phase one of the intensive program. Okay, so what is this program? Where 80 entrepreneurs come together in building something. It's half incubator, which helps you develop the idea team and business, and half accelerator, which provides you with guidance, capital, or money to scale your company. Run by a company called Antler, a Singapore-based venture capital firm founded in 2017. And since 2018, they invested in over 600 companies. Essentially, what we're doing is broken down into two phases. Phase one, founder dating boot camps and idea validation. So in the first 10 weeks, we'll lay the groundwork for our business. Figure out the team and who we want to work with. We'll come up with an idea and actively validate the market. Phase two, if chosen, and that's a big if. Antler will invest in your idea. Then you have three to four months to build something like key features and actively acquiring as many users as possible. Or be Ramo profitable. This all leads up to Demo Day. Have you ever had a dream that you would do what you want? It all goes well to help you raise the next round from other investors. If not, no harm, no foul. Because you've just spent five to six months working on something cool amid a bunch of talented people. You've learned the fundamentals of building a startup and hopefully apply those lessons into future endeavors. OK, this all sounds pretty cool, but how do I feel about it on day zero before starting my journey? So here are some thoughts from day zero. It's obviously incredibly exciting, but I'll be lying if I didn't feel nervous, a bit overwhelmed and a bit like an imposter. I mean, what can I realistically bring to the table? What if everybody is better than me? Will my previous knowledge even matter? Oh, crazy. Anyways, screw all those negative feelings. This is what I'm excited about. The first thing is building a team. We get to team up with someone that we might have never had the chance to work with. There's 44 different nationality. So people from all over the world, folks who have built cool things before and folks that have scaled things in the past. And this brings a really interesting question for myself. What do I value in a co-founder? Is it transparency, intelligence, integrity, technical skills, vision? What are some of my strengths and weaknesses so I can find someone that compliments that? And finally, who do I enjoy working with? What are the common traits? The second thing is building a business. So as mentioned, Adler and other VC firms couldn't invest in your idea. That means you'll learn how venture capitalists think about business, learning things about equity, cap tables, dilution, net free cash flow, all these terms that a designer like me never really cared about before. Because at the end of the day, to grow real wealth, you'll need to learn this process of judging and idea and business for yourself to start investing in companies early. So this is just my opinion. But plenty of folks get rich working in companies like Facebook, Airbnb. But I'll argue that you should understand the mechanics of what makes a company great in order to work for them. And then finally, it's building a product. I've been a designer working in the tech industry for nearly a decade. So I'm fairly confident here. However, I'm also looking forward to learning a different approach, learning lessons to optimize what I'm doing for UX Playbook. One interesting thing is this. I noticed that most folks on the program are looking for technical or marketing co-founders. Technical meaning code, someone to actually build it line by line. And marketing meaning growth, someone to bring in the users. And here's the interesting thing. No one is looking for a designer. Being one of the handful of designers in the program, I'm kind of glad that I'll be advocating UX. I'm heading the design team that's building the enclosure for the box. It's time for the concept meeting. Something as simple as what should we call this thing could be an interesting discussion. A name defines a company. It has to be something primal. Something that you can scream out during intercourse. Like Aviato. Uber. That was my initial feeling. One thing is for sure. The pressure is real. Just be careful. Everyone's watching you now. Yeah, totally. I know. Thanks, Jvb. No, I mean, they're watching you right now. And where is that camera? So if you want to follow my startup journey of how a designer builds a startup in 10 weeks, hit the big red button. Let's see if I can make it through to 10 weeks into phase two. The question now is, what should I design? Bye!